


Twists, Turns, and Shifts

by fandomsnstuff



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, spoilers for the whole shebang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 00:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20073445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomsnstuff/pseuds/fandomsnstuff
Summary: As you know, there is a story about a dark storm and a silver ship and seven birds.This is that story, shifted slightly to the left.~There is a world with a purple sky, two suns, and a shiny new spaceship. There are six excited and nervous crew members awaiting launch day.





	Twists, Turns, and Shifts

As you know, there is a story about a dark storm and a silver ship and seven birds.

This is that story, shifted slightly to the left.

~A New Conversation~

“Come on, I know there’s something on your mind. Tell me.”

“I just...I don’t think I want to go to the fancy-shmancy science school.”

“Okay, then...what _ do _you want to do?” 

“I want to go to culinary school. I like cooking and I’m _ good _ at it, and I just think-” 

“Hey. If it’ll make you happy, then I’m on board.” 

~A Similar Conversation~

“I don’t know…” 

“Come _ on _ , Lu, it’s fucking _ space _! If you don’t apply, I’ll do it for you I swear to God.” 

“I just wish you could come with me.”

“Hey, if you need a caterer, I’m your guy.” 

“You and I both know you’re one of the best wizards on the planet shut the fuck up.” 

“Well, yeah, natch, but I don’t have some fancy _ degree _ for magic so my chances of getting on a spaceship are slim to none.” 

“Still wish you could come with me.” 

“It’s only two months, we’ll live.” 

“Yeah…” 

“Put in the application, Lup.” 

~Separation~

There is a world with a purple sky, two suns, and a shiny new spaceship. This is the same as the story you know. 

What’s new, however, is that instead of seven, there are six excited and nervous crew members awaiting launch day. At the press conference the day before the launch and the storm and the century, there is an extra body in the audience, cheering for his sister and laughing at the motley crew she’ll be stuck with for two months. He’s there on launch day, too, though he’s not getting on the ship. 

They stand together and chatter until it’s time to go. They hug, but they do not say goodbye, they think it’s bad luck. They say ‘see you later’, they hug one more time, and then she turns and gets on the ship, leaving him behind. 

This next part is more or less the same. The Hunger shows up, and it consumes. It reaches out and absorbs the plane, and the crew of the Starblaster can do nothing but watch. 

She does not cry. 

That first night when she locks herself in her room and curls up alone on her bed, she wants to scream and cry for her brother, but no tears come. She clutches a pillow to her chest and stares blankly at a wall. 

She wants to cry, but she is numb. She feels as if a piece of herself is gone, and he is. 

In her original story, she was part of a set. The Twins. Always together, never apart, even in ominous prophecies from a robot. You know this. 

This is not that story. 

In this story, she is half of that whole, her matching piece ripped away from her, and she feels empty and alone and...lost. 

In the original, they were The Twins. In this one, she is The Lost.

~The Century~

The Lost saves a crystal full of souls. 

The Peacekeeper talks to the apocalypse. 

The Protector saves a jellyfish. 

The Lonely Journalkeeper fights a year alone. 

The Wordless One dodges the storm and gets them out.

The Lover earns his title. 

~The Century, A Little to The Left~

Half a dozen cycles in, The Lost drags The Journalkeeper to her room and tells her all the stories about her brother she can think of. The Journalkeeper writes them all down, word for word, in an empty journal. When she’s done, The Lost smiles, thanks her, and shoos her out of the room. Whenever she thinks of another one, she pulls The Journalkeeper aside, tells her about it, and asks her to add it to the collection. 

The Journalkeeper always obliges. 

Nearly two decades in, after the cycle with the robots and the crystal, The Lost almost gives the same speech you heard in your story. 

“I believe that one of these times, we’re gonna get it right. And we’re gonna find a way to defeat the Hunger and… save everybody inside of it. I have to believe that to keep doing what we do. Because I have to believe that--” 

But in this speech she pauses. She doesn’t end on a joke about fifteen dollars and Greg Grimaldis, she takes a moment and skips straight to making her crew promise to never consider destroying a world ever again. 

~Familiar Faces~

Not all the worlds they land on have civilisation, but on the ones that do, The Lost comes to learn there’s a chance of seeing a face she knows all too well. 

Over the course of the century, there were cycles where The Lost found her brother again. Whether or not he had his own sister varied, and oftentimes The Lost wouldn’t make herself known to him. She would watch from afar (a little stalker-ish) and simply revel in the fact that her brother, at least that version of him, was safe and alive and happy. 

She would work three times as hard in those cycles to find the Light, but whether or not they found it and saved that plane, every time she left a version of her brother behind, The Lost felt like she was losing him all over again. 

Sometimes, however, she couldn’t avoid interacting with an alternate version of her brother. 

At the Legato Conservatory, The Chancellor _ insists _ that The Lost meet one of their philosophy professors, “you look so much like him!” she says. And no matter how much The Lost tries to insist that she doesn’t want to bother him, The Chancellor leads her to an office and knocks. 

When the door opens, they stare at each other. The Chancellor leaves, and this Other him invites her into his office. They sit together, and it’s only a matter of minutes before they’re both crying. She tells him stories about her own brother, and he tells her about his sister. 

She tells him about the journey she’s been on for nearly half a century, about how she lost her brother and the other alternate versions she’s lost so far. He tells her about how he lost his sister, how he became a philosophy professor, spewing out the kind of quotes you’d find cross-stitched into a pillow. She tells him about The Peacemaker’s ‘Bless this Mess” cross-stitch, and how she learned the craft specifically to make a matching one that says “Blast this Ass”. His laugh sounds just like her brother. 

They talk more over the course of the year, and she can almost feel as if they’re The Twins again. She knows it’s not the same, and that it’ll be over and she’ll be alone again soon, but she revels in the respite she finds with him. 

After her performance and subsequent talk with The Lover, her alternate brother finds her and gives her a hug. He smiles and squeezes her shoulders and says, “he’d be happy for you.” She cries and he holds her tighter and says again, “he’d be _ so _ happy for you.” 

When The Protector tells them that the Light of Creation on this world is not, in fact, the same as the Light of Creation they’re looking for, The Lost is devastated. They all are, but she was so _ sure _ that this world would be okay, and now she knows it’ll be consumed in a matter of days. 

As they fly away from the conservatory, The Lost watches as, once again, a plane containing her brother is torn out of orbit and absorbed into The Hunger. 

But she is not alone this time. The Lover is on one side, gripping her hand, a reminder that he is there for her. The Journalkeeper is on her other side, just standing and watching with her, but there nonetheless. She feels a hand on her hip, because The Peacekeeper can only reach so high. The Protector puts an arm around her shoulders. The five of them stand there until they are forced apart by the reset, as The Wordless One flies them into the next world. 

~Back Soon~

You know about the relics already. Although in this story, there is no stone. There’s a staff, a chalice, a sash, a monocle, a bell, and a gauntlet. With the absence of a seventh relic, the six remaining ones are just that little touch more powerful than the relics you know. 

The Lost thought she could handle the pure damage her gauntlet could do. She thought it was better than the sick, twisted ways the other relics could be manipulated. But the casualties were high and they kept getting higher. So, much like in the story you know, she set out to find her relic and hide it away. 

This ends exactly the way you expect it to, with a slice from a poisoned knife, a burned up dwarf, and a lich trapped in an umbrella. 

But before that, the story twists. 

The Lost stands on a hill overlooking a valley in which a small town sits. Half the town is on fire, some citizens are running away, some are trying to fight for the gauntlet and getting burnt up by its wielder. The Lost considered going down there and subduing The Wielder herself, keeping her from killing herself and the whole town, but she got there too late. She is too far away, and by the time she arrives in the town, The Wielder will be taken over by the gauntlet, and the town will be gone. 

The Wielder is an elf. Tall, slim, long blonde hair flowing around her like flames, her experience with evocation magic making the gauntlet even more powerful in her hands. The Lost watches in horror when, in between all the fleeing citizens, she sees one person running towards The Wielder. He stops in front of her and The Lost can’t hear what he’s saying, but she can tell he’s trying to bargain with her. Probably begging The Wielder to take the gauntlet off and leave with him. 

“You need to get out of there,” The Lost whispers, knowing that he can not hear her and would not listen if he could. 

Moments later, the town goes up in a column of flame, and The Lost screams out. For you see, The Lost and The Wielder were one and the same. Alternate versions of each other. The Lost wanted to save The Wielder, but one was too far away and the other was too far gone. She lost The First, then over the course of a century she lost The In-Betweens, and now, due to her inability to save The Wielder, she’s lost The Last. 

Or so she thinks. 

The Lost shields her face from the heat of the flames, and when they die down she looks into the valley to see the destruction. 

But it’s different from all the other burned-up towns. 

Like all the others, the town has been turned into a circle of black glass a mile in diameter, centered on the charred corpse of The Wielder. However, the circle isn’t completely solid. A few feet in front of the remains of The Wielder is a small circle of untouched ground, maybe five feet in diameter, and in the middle of it stands The Last. Completely unharmed. 

With her last shred of humanity, The Wielder harnessed her magic and spell shaped the column of flame from the gauntlet around her brother, saving his life.

The Last does not reach for the gauntlet. It speaks to him, of course, but promises of power mean nothing to him, not when it killed his sister. He stands in his small safe circle, staring at her remains. 

The Lost sighs, pulls up the hood of her robe to disguise herself, and walks down into the valley to retrieve her relic. 

~An Interaction~

The Last watches as his sister’s remains crumble into ash when The Lost takes the gauntlet off. 

He does not know The Lost, and does not realize who she is, and when she starts to walk away, he calls out. 

“Hey!” 

The Lost stops in her tracks. She does not turn to face him. 

“What are you going to do with that?” 

“I’m going to hide it so this never happens again.” 

The Last does not register the familiarity of The Lost’s voice, and she disappears before he can say anything else. 

~Forgetting~

The redaction happens nearly the same, only The Lover is alone this time. He feels his mind turn to static, he feels himself forgetting what he’s looking for. He jumps off the side of the ship before he can forget where he is. 

The results are just as you expect.

The Protector is given a home in a craftsman’s city that gets burned to the ground. 

The Peacemaker is given a home on the beach that becomes...unsatisfactory. 

The Lover is dead and alone, endlessly searching. 

The Wordless One earns his title, as does The Lonely Journalkeeper. 

The Last forgets about his sister, starts a show, and poisons forty people. 

~The Motivation~ 

The Wielder did not go after the gauntlet with the intent of power or control. She wanted to go to a prestigious school of magic and the application process was very competitive. She’d applied on a number of occasions, whenever they’d saved up enough money for it, but was always rejected. 

When word of the relics came around, she knew if she could get her hands on one and control it, there was no way they could say no. Ideally, she would find the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, seeing as she specialized in evocation. 

Her brother didn’t love the idea, what with all the destruction the relics had been causing. So, when she finally caught wind of where the gauntlet might be, she left her brother a note and went after it. 

When he woke up in the morning, The Last knew exactly where The Wielder had gone, despite the brevity of her note. 

_ Back Soon. _

~Remembering~

You know already how three adventurers team up, destroy a city (accidentally), and end up on the moon. You also know about the voidfish, and how when the adventurers drink the ichor, they remember so much (but not enough). 

However, there’s extra remembering in this story. When The Protector and The Peacemaker drink the ichor, they remember relics and a war. No more, no less. The Last remembers relics, a war, and his sister. Killed by the gauntlet currently in his possession. 

He chokes out her name and The <strike> Lonely Journalkeeper </strike> Director feels her breath catch in her throat. She asks him to repeat what he said. 

“My twin sister,” he says, “she was super into the relics.” 

And he’s angry, only for a moment, about his sister getting caught up in the redaction. The Director apologizes, and he crosses his arms and looks away. 

“Not like you could’ve known.” 

She pointedly doesn’t think about how she erased The Lost from The Lover’s memory on purpose. 

She watches him in the test of initiation, as he wields a familiar umbrella after snapping his wand. She thinks of the cruel irony of the universe that lead to that man using that umbrella. 

She spends that night reading through the book of stories The Lost told her about The First, and wonders where The First and The Last will intersect, and where they will diverge. 

~The Reaper~

With no stone relic, there’s no crystallized lab, no crystal golems and planar mirrors. There’s no Evard’s Black Tentacles, but The Reaper still arrives.

They’re still in the lab, though they’re not trying to save the world. The Scientist has developed some sort of new technology, and The Director made them go there to help him test it. 

That’s when The Reaper shows up. Much like your story, he comes for The Scientist, but in the process finds a few of the highest bounties he’s ever seen, and when he reads out their crimes, he’s met with confusion. 

The Last, the only one in the room with no bounty, vouches for his teammates. Says one can’t even do magic, and the one that can, isn’t very good at it. And just like your story, he lets them go under the condition they stop dying. 

Then there’s a time-sick town, eleven more deaths, a wine and pottery date, and an umbrella acting up at the mention of hunting liches. 

Nothing you don’t already know. 

~The Prophecy~

Though there was no crystal lab, there is still a robot with a soul embedded inside, and an ominous prophecy that comes from it. 

_ I saw all of existence all at once. _

_ I saw a dark storm, a living hunger eating it from within. _

_ But I saw a brilliant light heralded by six birds, flying tirelessly from the storm. _

_ I saw six birds: _

_ The Lost _

_ The Lover _

_ The Protector _

_ The Lonely Journalkeeper _

_ The Peacemaker _

_ and The Wordless One. _

~<strike> LUP </strike> BRE~

Between The Reaper and the time-sick town, there is The Detective and a magic lesson. 

The Lost, trapped inside her own creation, knows she can’t burn her name into the wall. The Last had seen the body of his sister, and she hadn’t been a lich. So instead, she attempts to spell out “BREAK” or “BREAK ME” if she had enough energy for it. But The Last drops the umbrella before she can finish, and her spell fizzles out. 

Not quite the dramatic scene you know, but a plate of macarons still got obliterated, and it was still quite shocking for the magic teacher and student involved. 

~Breaking, in More Ways Than One~

We arrive at the apocalypse all the same. Twin liches feeding off suffering, a pinkie, an eye, a few memories, ten years, beauty, a body, it’s all the same. The Lover, The Peacemaker, The Detective, and The Last break into The Director’s private quarters. They drink the ichor, and The Detective and The Last see a baby voidfish, The Lover remembers, and The Peacemaker can feel something big coming on. 

They’re dragged out in front of The <strike> Director </strike> Lonely Journalkeeper, and she explains. The Peacemaker and The Wordless One remember, The Protector returns and remembers, and The Hunger attacks exactly the same. 

What’s different here, aside from The Last not remembering (for he never had those memories in the first place), is that when The Detective casts a fireball far above his skillset, instead of breaking the umbrella, The Last says, “I swear to God, this thing is fucking haunted or something.” 

Which is when it clicks for the remaining five Starblaster crew in the room. The Lover runs over to The Last, snatches the umbrella from his hands, and snaps it over his knee. 

The Last doesn’t have time to be indignant before being blasted across the room. When he looks up, he sees a red robed lich wreathed in flame, and she looks far too familiar. 

~The Lich and The Elf~

“You...you died. I saw your body! You died and you’re not a lich and-” 

“She did die. I’m so sorry, but she did. I’m her but I’m not, I’m sorry.” 

~An Ending~

The rest of the apocalypse happens just the way you know it. There’s a feat of transmutation, a story and song, a third option, and a couple of legends. And much like your story, there is no possible way to tell all that happens next. Time moves forward. It does not stop nor does it pause, it just goes. 

But just like in the story you know, there are pieces that can be told, and the rest is up to you. 

After the apocalypse, The Lost becomes The Found, no longer trapped in her umbrella, reunited with her family, getting to know The Last, and working day and night on a way to get back to The First (and her fifteen dollars). 

After months of work, she finally perfects the plane hopping belt and goes to see him. He isn’t difficult to find, and they cry all over each other when they reunite. She tells him as much as she can, things that might not have been in the story, and she asks him to come back to Faerun with her. He agrees. 

When they return, The First and The Last stare at each other for a few moments. They’re perfectly identical, save for their clothes and the brown roots poking out of The Last’s blond hair. Then they smile identical devilish smiles. 

They make plans together. They’re going to put out their brand and it’s going to be the biggest brand in all of Faerun. The Last runs his school and The First runs his restaurant, though they agree that everything needs to be double approved before moving forward.

And though they have the same name and the same face, The First and The Last are distinct in their own ways. It’s difficult for most to tell them apart, especially when they’re purposely being confusing, but The Found can always tell. 

Decades later, when The Protector dies and reunites with his love, there is an extra soul in the cottage on the island. She is not there for him, and it will be centuries until she is able to see the one she is waiting for. In the meantime, she welcomes The Protector, then The Journalkeeper, The Detective, The Peacekeeper, The Wordless One. The Lover, The Found, and The Reaper don’t join them all in the cottage. They can’t die, but they visit. Not too often, as communing with spirits who’ve passed on isn’t specifically part of their job, but on occasion they’ll join the family in the cottage for a meal or a conversation. It’s during these visits, and whenever someone new arrives at the cottage that she asks them question after question about her brother and his life out on the material plane.

Centuries pass and, true to form, The First is the one who goes...well...first. He is lead to the cottage (which is much larger than where it started) by his sister, and The Wielder can tell he’s not the one she’s been waiting for. She welcomes him all the same before the other residents of her home cause a commotion for their new addition. 

Mere days later, The Last passes away. He is lead to the cottage by The Reaper, and they barely touch solid ground before The Wielder is barrelling towards them. The Last lets go of The Reaper and takes his sister in his arms. They hug for the first time in centuries, and are truly reunited. 

The Lover, The Found, and The Reaper visit for a meal, and all the residents of the cottage watch as two sets of twins, all four of them identical, move about the kitchen in a complicated, perfectly synchronized dance. 

And in this moment, all four feel full. They feel loved and happy and connected. 

In this moment, she is not The Wielder. She is not The Lost or The Found. He is not The First and he is not The Last. 

They are The Quadruplets. 

~The Progression~ 

The Twins.

The Lost/The Found. The First.

The Wielder. The Last.

The Quadruplets.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: hey what if taako decided to go to culinary school and wasn't on the stablaster but lup was  
My friend: hey what if there are versions of taako in the planes they visit so she loses him over and over again  
Us: proceed to hash out details for this au for another like. hour.
> 
> I finally managed to actually finish a taz fic (i have like. five taz wips rn lmao) and I'm in ao3 validation withdrawal so please! Comments and kudos are much much appreciated!! and come talk to me! My tumblr is @fandomsnstuff! We can yell about taz together and maybe you'll become a vessel for when i have a half-baked story idea to scream about.


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